Happy Fat (or Shrove) Tuesday! Each week on the blog I get to share some of what I have seen, read, and found interesting and thought provoking over the past week. To help make sense of all of these links, I have grouped them by the following categories: Church and Ministry Thought & Practice; Cross-Sector Collaboration; Leadership Thought & Practice; Millennials; Neighbor Love; Social Media & Blogging; Stewardship; and Vocation. I hope that you enjoy these links!

Carey Nieuwhof listed “9 Things that Worked in the Church a Decade Ago that Don’t Today.” The things that Carey points to include: relying on an automatic return to church; appealing to people out of guilt or obligation; simply being better than other churches; gimmicks; inauthentic leadership; a self-centered mission; random programming; assuming people know what their next step is; and relying on what you’ve learned in the past.

Greg Satell shares some important insights in “Manage For Mission, Not for Metrics.” Within this post, Greg writes and reminds, “a successful enterprise is built through motivating employees, earning the trust of partners and serving customers well. Nobody cares what your internal metrics are.” What do you think?

President Barack Obama is photographed during a presidential portrait sitting for an official photo in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

David Brooks penned what I think was a fair op-ed column on President Obama and leadership writing and sharing, “I Miss Barack Obama.” I was particularly struck by two quotes. First, David writes, “Many of the traits of character and leadership that Obama possesses, and that maybe we have taken too much for granted, have suddenly gone missing or are in short supply.” It’s hard to argue with this. Second, I appreciate his conclusion as well when he writes, “Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.”

Jon Mertz at Thin Difference wrote about and unpacked, “Millennials: The New Leadership 101.” Within this Jon highlights the following principles: Lead a business to have a positive impact on society. It can.; Healthy organizations achieve success with a more holistic balance sheet; leadership scales bigger than self-agendas; personal values are important when making business decisions, know yours; social leadership translates to active leadership, active leaders leverage social for positive change.”

Friend, blogger, and ELCA World Hunger educational director, Ryan Cumming wrote about “Finding Faith in Flint.” This is an important read. Within this Ryan writes, “Long after the media has left, Flint will still be dealing with this catastrophe. The lead will still be in the pipes, and the chemicals and bacteria will still be in the river. But people of faith and people of goodwill will still be here, too, to accompany one another and to hold government accountable. And that should give hope in Flint and urgent anxiety in Lansing, where both are needed.”

That concludes this edition of the links. I hope you have enjoyed them. As always, if you have particular questions or topics for me to think about on the blog, please share them. Also, if there are things you would like to see included in the links, please let me know that too. Thank you for reading and being a part of the conversation! Blessings on your week-TS